In Time
by B.W.T
Summary: Jareth's heart is beating a rhythm that isn't his, a rhythm that's scared - that's dying. A rhythm he'll move the stars to save.


**This is the companion story to _Venice_. Instead of a multi-chaptered fic, I did this. While I wrote it I listened to 'This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, our Home' and 'Madame De Pompadour', both composed by Murray Gold. I'd suggest listening to one of them while you read, they fit the mood I tried to set rather well.**

**Disclaimed: I don't own Labyrinth or Harry Potter (if you've read _Venice_, you'll see why this is in Crossovers).**

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"A lovers heart beats in time." Despite the fact that when he first heard the saying Jareth disbelieved it, he found that now he had no choice but to accept it. For proof, he merely had to listen to his own heart, which beat at a rhythm that hadn't existed until just twenty-two short years ago. A rhythm that jumped when he was lying safely in bed, screamed when he was eating dinner calmly, and slept when he was doing his daily run. Without his magic, this would surely have killed him; instead it only showed him exactly what the mortal girl was feeling.

So when fear clutched his heart and he felt as if every beat were his last, he knew he had to save her, even if it meant nearly breaking himself to bend her words so that he could move her world. So that he, lowly King he was, could stop a bullet.

Except he didn't stop it, he wasn't strong enough for that, he merely delayed it. When he learned that, he jumped from his bed at once – despite the healers orders that he rest – and went to find a way to save her. A way to break the words she so carelessly threw at him seven years ago.

In the deepest corners of his library he shoved aside scrolls so old they used mud as ink and searched for some secret; some forgotten spell to let his will be stronger then his stolen heart's. Eventually, he found the answer, but not in a scroll. He found it in the Wiseman, who spoke in nothing but riddles, telling a tale of a flickering moon and a gypsy's laugh.

Naturally, Jareth searched the Underground for this gypsy, but she wasn't Below – no, she was far Above, breathing into a crystal that echoed the look of one of Jareth's own. Strung about her were garlands of softly shimmering lights that lit the torn paper of her walls in a cheerful, old way. Behind her, one of the lights cast the shape of a flickering crescent moon on the wall.

When Jareth eventually found her he was almost unwilling to listen to one so obviously mortal, but the frantic heart in his chest still waiting to die made him quiet his protests. So he sat and he listened as she told him stories, fantastic stories that would have amazed anyone but the Goblin King, and finally, when he'd grown so restless he thought he might explode, she told him how to save his heart.

She told him, in a voice barely above a whisper, to simply _wait_. He had time, not much, but enough, enough for the words to break. All he had to do was watch and let his heart dream the right dreams.

Everyday after that was harder, it felt as though a ghost were following him. On All Hallows Eve, he saw it, he saw the rain and the gun, he felt the fear, and it nearly broke him. That night, as his heart slept, he sent a desperate dream, trying to coax the right words from worry-worn lips. Ah, but her will was strong, even as her mind cracked just slightly. It wasn't until five nights later her will finally broke and she spoke his name in her sleep, opening the portal for him.

He waited impatiently for it to open fully; it took so much longer since it had been bricked so well. Finally, though, it opened and he rushed through it, directly into the hall she'd been eating her meals in. There he finally let himself beg, begged her to agree, to let him take her away. He watched her more closely then he'd ever before, and in his chest he felt the heart that beat a tune that wasn't his calm just as she whispered what he needed, agreement.

Seconds after they were gone, he felt the bullet he'd pulled from time fall back through, harmlessly onto a stone floor in a world she'd never see again.

In his arms, Sarah slept safely.

**----**

**So, what do you think?**


End file.
